


Death Comes Fast (So You Have To Run Faster)

by ElenCelebrindal



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's
Genre: Canon Universe, Everyone Is Alive, Gen, Kinda, Not Beta Read, Pre-Canon, Sick Character, before the start of 5d's, they almost died of fever that's what i'm saying, when they live in Satellite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 07:19:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19194301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElenCelebrindal/pseuds/ElenCelebrindal
Summary: Satellite is not a good place. You can die anytime, anywhere, and no one would find you. That's why, when the Enforcers get sick, they try to stay alive. Luckily for them, not everyone wants to see them dead, and the love of a foster mother is enough to save her little teens.No one remembers Satellite was actually a deadly island to live on, so this is just a little something to recall it. Yusei and Kalin are 13, Jack is 14 and Crow is 12. Beware of dark themes.





	Death Comes Fast (So You Have To Run Faster)

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta read, unfortunately.   
> This is something I wrote a while ago (maybe a month or two?) while thinking back at how no one really said a word about the hellhole Satellite must have been. I mean, the majority of the people lived on the run or in collapsing buildings, everyone was forced to work with Neo Domino' garbage and there were gangs everywhere.   
> There's no way Yusei, Jack, Crow and Kalin lived their best life, out there.
> 
> There is not shipping in here, only a tiny little thought coming from Martha, so you can read this however you want.

One time, they all got sick.

 

It was a harsh winter that year, in Satellite. The ruined island of what was left behind by the Zero Reverse was hidden by a thick layer of fog, and when it wasn’t, it snowed or rained almost every day.

 

December brought freezing rain, pouring day and night above crumbling buildings, playing a well-known music of danger for those who lived on the street. Standing by the sea was impossible, not only because of high waves crashing way farther than usual; the air was cold, too cold, and those who had shelter there had to flee for warmth.   
Someone fell into the water, swallowed by it, muscles in atrophy following icy temperatures and shock. No one cared. No one stopped to help. No one wanted to die that horrible death.   
Bystanders were just that, a morbid audience that watched in silence and horror.

Some died under rivers of rains, illness catching them from behind, ambushing them with cold fingers and twisted fate. Those who survived sickness, those who thought they were safe, died in desperate fleeing attempts. Kalin saw one of them, a teen who couldn’t have been older than him. He saw his feet slip on wet concrete, his head bleeding as the fall made his body crumple on the ground. He watched as the agent swept him up and away without telling a word. There was nothing he could do, aside from mourn another young life lost to that place.

 

The year ended in darkness, black clouds shrouding the sky and hiding billions of twinkling stars. Not that they ever saw the stars. Satellite hid from them every beauty of the world, its skies cloaked in toxic fumes and smoke coming from waste disposal factories garbage fires. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to smell, if not poisonous mist, cries for help and the stench of death and fear.   
In Neo Domino City people were cheering and drinking, welcoming the new year in happiness and company. Restaurants and homes were full of laughter and liveliness, the air smelling of good food and filled with music and chattering.   
In Satellite, people were praying  and crying, shivering in a night that didn’t bring anything new. Subways, tunnels and shelters were silent, the air smelling of blood and tears and filled with sobbing and shouting.

 

January brought life to Neo Domino and death to Satellite.   
The streets were filled with corpses, the broken dreams and hopes of those people who couldn’t take it anymore. It had become a familiar sight, now.   
Every new year, people swore to survive. Every new year, people chose to die. A morbid tradition, because there was no other name to call it. When the clock hit midnight, gunshots and cries could be heard instead of wishes and claps.   
No one tried to stop it anymore.   
Satellite existed for almost thirteen years, now. A handful of months, really, but just enough to destroy dozens of lives.

 

February  brought the biggest snowstorm Satellite had ever seen. In a matter of hours every single inch of concrete, broken walls, dead plants, everything was covered in white. Walking was impossible, a lost fight against grabbing wind. A look outside told the Enforcers they could stop trying, the falling snow too dense to see through it.   
They ran out of food the day before, a last can of expired vegetable soup they barely heated up. Keeping a fire going was impossible without having wood or crap materials to fuel it, and they ran out of it too. The last of their matches burned away in the effort of lighting up pieces of wood taken from outside, even if they knew it was no use.   
Nothing coming from outside was useful, damp with water or frozen solid.   
None of the Enforcers had warm clothes, either. Just their sleeveless tops and pants filled with holes, tattered cloaks too thin to help them retain body heat. They didn’t even have blankets.

 

After the snowstorm, three days of non-stop snow falling from the sky and whitewashing streets and buildings, no Security agent came to deliver provisions, probably too lazy to leave their cozy and warm houses for a bitter hellhole like Satellite. Not that they brought a lot – and getting what they provided was a challenge in itself – but upon learning they weren’t getting anything Jack punched a wall.   
Three days without food, they could survive and tell stories about it. They still had water, coming from melted snow even though it was way far from clean, but they weren’t going to last without food. Not when around them it was so cold.   
The house they had to flee too was severely damaged, there was no running water and several places had collapsed. Had it been a better place, maybe they could have gone forward a little bit more without complaining.   
They’d been at a better place, one where hot water came in little bits from rusty plumbing, but a Security raid got them on the move before even thinking about setting base.

 

Crow was the first one. He started off sneezing and sniffling more and more, until a light hand on his forehead told Yusei he was burning with fever. He was relatively okay, but then Kalin got sick as well, after keeping close to Crow while trying to keep him warm. He had it worse, the house resounded more often than not with horrible coughing. They tried lightening the fever, but without food and warmth there was nothing much to be done.   
Jack and Yusei got sick the day after Kalin, coming home after a failed attempt at finding an underground market to get medicine or any kind of food. Instead, they found freezing rain and no shelter in sight. When they came back, both Jack and Yusei were drenched in water, frozen on their hair and clothes.

 

On the sixth day without food, Yusei had the luck of finding a rat running around the house. He caught it, despite being barely able run, and used some dry wood and matches he’d found the day before alongside Jack. It wasn’t enough to light a fire warm enough to heat up around the room, but Yusei made it work to at least eat something.   
It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t the best thing in the world, but they managed to divide it between them and survived another day.

 

The seventh day awoke with Jack and Kalin being delirious with fever, taken down by a common illness that no one in Neo Domino City would have thought to fear. Yusei didn’t even need to touch them to feel how high their body temperature was, hovering a hand above their forehead was enough. Crow’s conditions worsened overnight, and when the teen tried to get up and move around he was so dizzy he couldn’t even stand upright.   
It was a frightening situation, not being able to take care of themselves and not being able to do anything about it, because of the weather outside and because of their weakness.   
The only was left in decent conditions was Yusei, whose symptoms were luckily less severe than those of his friends, but even he kept swaying left and right every time he got up to fetch some water, or to check in someone had decided to sell food on the street.   
The snow had been fairly washed away by heavy rain, so it finally wasn’t all white everywhere, but if anything the water made everything worse by freezing and creating thick slabs of ice. The body of a young woman who slipped and hit her head on an iron fence was still there, being eaten by frostbite. Her blood froze on the ground, adding up to an already threatening place.

 

Halfway through the day, Yusei resolved to get some help. It was no use waiting there for death to claim them, endlessly shivering in a vain hope that someone would rescue them. So, he got up from their nest of torn cloaks and curled the fabric around his body as much as he could.  
Crow’s voice, so feeble and hurt it hardly reached his years, stopped Yusei on the door: «Where are you going…?».  
It was painful just listening to how lifeless his tone was, Yusei felt that like a shark of glass through his heart. He knew he wasn’t in better conditions. However, he couldn’t help but flinch at the sound of his own voice when he replied, so low and dead it didn’t seem real.  
«I’m getting help», he said nonetheless, trying to sound as firm as possible. He didn’t want to go, didn’t want to leave Jack, and Crow and Kalin, but he had to try. _He had to_.   
Crow glanced at Jack and Kalin, restlessly rambling nonsense in their hallucinated dreams. Their faces were flushed red, burning like fire, and a thin layer of sweat formed on their foreheads. He shook his head: «You will die, out there. You’re sick as well». A plea to stay, even though he wanted Yusei to go. He just didn’t want to be alone with them if they were to…  
«We’re going to die anyway, if we stay here», Yusei retorted, his teeth clattering as a gust of icy wind came through the door as he opened it. «And besides, I’m the one that feels… that feels better», he added. Sure, his head started spinning so bad he had to lean on the doorframe for support, but he was better.   
The answer he had back was a concerned and begging stare: «Don’t die out there, Yusei. For the love of… whatever being made our lives a living hell. Don’t die».   
«Wait for me. Hold on, guys».

 

Easier said than done. As soon as he stepped on the street, Yusei had to grab a piece of broken wall to avoid falling. His head hurt like hell, his vision was blurred and ice covered asphalt weren’t a good combination. Plus, there were holes filled with freezing and muddy water every three steps, and Yusei more than once ended up with a foot in them.   
Night was already falling when he made it on the main road, still leaning on walls and railings to keep walking. He was too weak, he knew it, but he didn’t give up. He couldn’t, not when his friends were on the verge of death.   
Yusei was so determined in finding a way to save them, he forgot his own body needed help. So, when a coughing fit had him to his knees, so violent his breathing stopped for almost a minute, the teen panicked and tried to move faster, only to slip on the ice and fall in liquefying snow.

 

When Yusei finally managed to reach the orphanage, after barely fleeing from a Security incursion and bleeding from several cuts on his hands and face – he’d been mugged on the way there, but the thieves left him upon finding nothing – he was so weak his legs gave out as soon as he heard someone yell his name. Yusei couldn’t pinpoint the voice, maybe it was a new kid, maybe he was just too exhausted to remember. He lay there, motionless and hurt on cold ground, his breath erratic as his lungs begged for relief. His skin was now burning hot, he could feel pain and soreness all over his body.   
He didn’t recognize the hands that swept him up and carried him inside, warmth seeping into his wet clothes.   
Yusei flinched as Martha’s voice yelled in his ears, tainted by worry and apprehension, but he wasn’t going to waste time. He forced his eyes open, hurting them in the bright light coming from a light-bulb, and didn’t care about registering Dr. Schmidt arms holding him upright. Time was running out.  
«Sector 5, 3rd street, 6th house on the left», he told them, repeating the same sentence he played over and over in his head on the entire way there.   
After those words, so faint Martha had to lean down to hear them, Yusei passed out.

 

He woke up in a much chillier room, weirdly silent and deprived of children’s bickering. Yusei dreamt of the orphanage, in his feverish dreams, of the first time he’d met Jack and brought him there like he was a lost puppy, of the day they’ve found Crow running away from Security as a bunch of agents arrested his friends for stealing food.   
They were safe, back then, a roof over their heads and warmth keeping them alive. They always had food in their plates, even cup ramen if they were lucky, even though they had to share everything and no one had as much as they wished.   
So, when his eyes adjusted to the light filtering though broken blinds, he suppressed a sigh. He was at the house once again, the now too familiar crumbling walls all around him, cold floor under his back. And then, he realized he was there, and tried to spring up.

 

«Calm down, Yusei. You’re safe, you’re okay», Martha reassured him, gently placing a hand on his shoulder to keep him laying down. They gave him a change of clothes, before heading to Sector 5 on the faulty bus Dr. Schmidt found abandoned in a junkyard, and brought spare ones also for the rest of the Enforcers. Martha also gave them blankets, which were piled up on their motionless frames, and smiled at Yusei: «Don’t worry, you’ll be fine», she assured.   
She woke Crow, Jack and Kalin up, the latter tried to squirm away from unfamiliar sighting, but they were too drained to do something other than stare. Crow immediately lit up upon seeing his foster mother, while Jack and Kalin only looked at her with foggy eyes. Jack squinted, trying to rearrange her features and match Martha’s voice to his brain, but he ended up worsening his headache without achieving anything.   
«Try to stay awake, okay? I’m going to light a fire and make you some food. And then you’ll take as much medicine as you need», she asserted, gathering branches and pieces of wood planks they brought from the orphanage. The fire took a hot minute to get going, but when it did beautiful heat spread throughout the room, and Martha placed a pot above it to cook some soup. It wasn’t canned, the orphanage luckily got some vegetables from Sector Security (sheer guilt, that was it), and the gods knew how much those boys needed food.   
The first thing she did after placing foot in that house was kicking out the decomposing remains of a rat they’d surely ate. And the smell in that room was awful, she almost threw up. Martha was aware they tried their best to keep clean and careful, but even they must have realized how dangerous their surrounding had become for their already faulty health. Not that she could blame them, seeing they could barely even _move_ , let alone walk around.

 

Sighing, Martha glanced at her boys and was glad to see Dr. Schmidt was busy checking their conditions and keeping them awake, largely aided by Crow. Kalin watched him with confused eyes, probably trying to make the gears in his mind work, and that situation had to be even more difficult for him. He never met Martha or Schmidt, or anyone of the orphanage really. Yusei, Jack and Crow met him on the run, after leaving to give more space and necessities to younger kids. Martha only knew him because Crow told her about him, that one time he came back to give everyone Duel Monsters cards to play. He already had one criminal mark scarring his face, when he showed up at the door.

 

Carefully, she removed the pot from the fire and kept it going by throwing another plank in it, and gathered the soup in a clean container so as to feed it to the boys without using the pot. For once, not even Jack had enough strength to complain about Martha spoon-feeding him like a child. Kalin was the most difficult one to approach, but Crow calmed him down considerably as he whispered in his ear. Martha could see her boys deeply cared about each other, but was also painfully aware of how intense the relationship between Yusei and Jack, and Crow and Kalin was.   
It hurt to think that maybe nothing was going to work out, if life was to keep going as it was in Satellite.   
After feeding them, Martha set the now empty container aside and diluted some kind of powdered medicine in four cups of water. He made them drink one each – Crow scrunched up his nose at the taste – and made sure they were going to take it until necessary.

 

«We can’t keep that much medicine, what if… what if the kids need it?», Crow shook his head. It was an entire box, more than twenty packets of medicine. Half of it was enough, they didn’t need it all. Or at least it was what he wanted to believe, doubled over to fight coughing and shivering.   
Martha didn’t slap him just because he was paler than a cadaver: «You almost died. All of you almost died from a common sickness», she scolded him, virtually scolded all of them really, because they would have said the same. She knew Yusei had come to her because they ran out of hope. «Shut up and take what you need, the last thing I want is to know someone found you dead in a back-alley or something».   
Crow tried to argue back, but she was right. If Yusei hadn’t managed to get her, they would have died. Sickness or starvation, maybe thirst if they were to become unable to even sit up and drink freezing and polluted water. So he didn’t talk back, for once, and let Dr. Schmidt ease him down: «Take half a packet twice a day, morning and evening. We’ll leave you food, so make sure you eat as much as you need to get back some strength. Don’t drink water straight after its melted, we brought you enough wood and kindle to keep a fire going at full force for at least four days, so heat it up a bit. Lay down and keep warm, don’t go running around unless it’s extremely – and I mean _extremely_ – necessary».  
It was a lot of information to take in. Martha wrote them down as the doctor spoke, handing out the piece of paper to Crow right after. He thanked her quietly, his lucid eyes lit up with gratitude.   
«You should start feeling better in about a week, if not less than that, but please don’t leave as soon as you can stand up. Limit yourself to walking around this house, if you need to. You’ve been lucky, more than you realize», she then added, backed up by a nodding Dr. Schmidt. They could have ended up with some sort of lung illness, and then they really would have died. Martha lost two kids, years prior, because of that. Satellite didn’t have medical attention, other than a couple doctors trapped on the island after the Zero Reverse.

 

Martha and the doctor left in the evening, but not before coaxing out promises and nods from all the Enforcers. Jack’s voice was rough and ragged, Kalin’s rasped so badly he flinched at himself. But, they swore not to underestimate the seriousness of being sick in a merciless place like Satellite, and to seek help without being their usual selfless selves. They were scared, and even if they would never admit it, for once they really accepted Martha’s help.

 

Now the one feeling better seeing Yusei’s conditions worsened and were way more similar to Jack and Kalin’s, took upon himself to take care of their and his own health. Sure, it wasn’t easy, and every step he took his body ached with pain, all the muscles in his body stiffened from laying down so much, but he managed.   
He did his best to gather everything they could need around them, leaving a small path free of clutter so they could get up and Crow could restock the fire every now and then. Even if Dr. Schmidt had said the fire would only last four days with the wood they brought, Crow made sure to keep it reasonably low as to save as much fuel as possible. They didn’t need too high, if anything it was dangerous. The house wasn’t made of wood, but Crow had decided the small cracks in the window glass weren’t enough to keep the smoke at bay had the fire been raging.   
He also made sure to make his friends take their medicine, gulped down his own (he grimaced again, that stuff was nasty) and finally got a good night sleep.

 

The Enforcers got back on their feet – still shaking a bit and sore all over – some days later, mostly thanks to bitter medicine and healthy(ish) food. Well, at least it wasn’t small animals caught in the streets, contaminated fish or expired cans filled with who knew what.   
A week later, despite Jack and Yusei’s sporadically sneezing, they were all able to leave the house and walk around without having to sit down every three minutes. The change of clothes Martha brought them – much warmer clothing more or less their size – worked miracles alongside their sewed up cloaks.   
Obviously, though, the first thing they did after recovering was heating up buckets of water they got by melting the cleanest snow they could find, and washing themselves. They didn’t have soap yet, no one dared walking too far to maybe get some empty-ish bottles coming from Neo Domino City’s trash, but the feeling of water running down their bodies and _finally_ cleaning them was so good they prayed to never get that dirty again.

 

They never talked about it, afterwards. None of the Enforcers brought up the issue, they’d been too scared to even remember it, but they also made sure to do anything to avoid that kind of situation again. Were previously there was nothing, on their shoulder there were always backpacks – found while scavenging garbage dumps for useful stuff – filled with necessities. A couple cans of food, to be kept only for real emergencies and _never_ ran out of food again and not being able to get it for days; always a bottle of water, Jack had the disgusting luck of finding an actual thermos upon rummaging in trash piles; and blankets, the ones Martha gave them plus extras they found laying around, even if torn and ragged.   
Kalin  also took the good and bad decision of carrying a knife with him wherever he went, just in case, even though he never used it. the Enforcers fought with Duel Disks, not weapons. Satellite already had enough violence and death by itself, they didn’t need to add up their own.

 

It was going to be a long winter, followed by a harsh spring, and they were finally prepared for that.   
Even if bodies piled up in street corners, suffocating stench coming from their decomposing flesh, wanted to tell otherwise, they were going to keep on trying.   
Even if they had to fight day and night, with cards and fists, even if they had to steal food and medicine, and give even more than what they could to get important necessities, they were going to keep on surviving.   
Until, one day, maybe they would finally keep on _living_.

 

Little did they know, life still had a couple devastating backstabbing for them.

 

The Enforcers split up, as Kalin lost his mind and got arrested for killing a Security agent. Crow received even more markings on his face and on his soul, doing his best to protects those poor children that didn’t deserve the life they got. Yusei and Jack tried to stay together and made new friends, new allies, even got a new hideout down in the subway tunnels, until Jack got blackmailed by Rex Goodwin and swept away from Satellite.   
Left in company but alone, Crow and Yusei went on with their lives as best as they could, their ears still full with cries, sick laughter, pleas and gunshots. Crow met blazing fire as his fate, his heart sinking even deeper in his chest as he watched Pearson die engulfed by merciless flames. Yusei finally left on his Duel Runner and found Jack, only to be arrested for trespassing and enduring too much in the Facility.   
And Kalin died of starvation, lonely in his cell, so sure their friends betrayed him he didn’t have a heart anymore.

 

But they never stopped their hopes from blooming.

**Author's Note:**

> I have so much stuff going on right now I should probably stop writing new stuff and finding old stuff. But whatever, I wanted to share my own little headcanon for something that has to be happened. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, leave kudos or comments if you want, every little thing means the world to me!
> 
> See you in the next one!


End file.
